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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26615179">and i've been cold since you left</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/CC_Writes_Stuff/pseuds/CC_Writes_Stuff'>CC_Writes_Stuff</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Make It Hurt: Whumptober 2020 [16]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Blood, Canon-Typical Violence, Childhood Friends, Emotional Hurt, F/M, Fever, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Golden Deer Route, Gen, Hallucinations, Hurt, I'm so sorry but it's for the plot, Minor Character Death, My Unit | Byleth Has Emotions, My Unit | Byleth Needs a Hug, Past Character Death, Post-Timeskip | War Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sickfic, but like not</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 05:34:36</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,670</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26615179</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/CC_Writes_Stuff/pseuds/CC_Writes_Stuff</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A triple-whammy of a sudden fever, the death of one of her students by her hands, and memories not quite buried lead to Byleth hallucinating about someone she'd rather forget.</p>
<p>-</p>
<p>Written for Whumptober Day 16: A Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Golden Deer Students &amp; My Unit | Byleth, It's all very subtle but it's there, My Unit | Byleth &amp; Claude von Riegan, My Unit | Byleth/Claude von Riegan</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Make It Hurt: Whumptober 2020 [16]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1915390</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>53</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Whumptober 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>and i've been cold since you left</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The Valley of Torment was a fitting name for such a place.</p>
<p>Even in the year she had spent in Almyra, the heat there was nothing compared to the burning, scorching feeling of the Aliell. Despite stripping down to the most barest but protective layer in case of emergency, it had done little to stop the heat from clinging to her skin like blood. The Blue Lions students, having grown up in an area with bitterly cold winters, seemed to be doing even worse. The only person who seemed almost unaffected by the hellish flame of the valley was Claude.</p>
<p>Almost. Even he seemed to be wilting a little under the lava and flames of the Valley of Torment.</p>
<p>If this was what hell felt like, she’d like to leave the mercenary work, please.</p>
<p>Byleth had always enjoyed warmth - heat, to her, meant the heat of someone’s skin as they hugged her, the beating of the sun on her to know she was there, alive, the warmth that came with her salvation and burned away the cold, wet feelings of blood and ghosts. But even this was too much for Byleth to bear.</p>
<p>The heat here was too hot, raging fires and lava so hot it could burn off her skin, making her see people and places she didn’t want to see, so she would look away when she caught forest green eyes looking at her from the corner of her vision.</p>
<p>It had only gotten worse once the Imperial-sponsored Kingdom troops came, ready for battle, Ashe with them.</p>
<p>And <em>goddess</em>, she <em>tried</em>. She tried everything under the sun to convince him to switch sides, to join them, but then he raised his bow and knocked Petra down from the sky.</p>
<p>Byleth liked Ashe, but Petra was her student, her ally, and Ashe wasn’t - he was never a part of the Golden Deer, and he was an enemy right now, an enemy that had just killed one of her allies, her troops, and was liable to kill more if he wasn't stopped. So, with a heavy heart, she clutched the fabric of time between her hands and rewound and re-spun it, back to a few minutes in that hellish landscape before Petra fell from the sky.</p>
<p>It was the first time Byleth had used her power to kill one of her students.</p>
<p>She wasn’t sure if it was the fight or the heat that left her bone-weary and exhausted in a way she hadn’t felt since the days following first Khalid and the Jeralt’s deaths. All she wants to do is lay down and sleep for a week or so. They were out of Aliell now, back at Garreg Mach, and she was face-down on her bed away from the scorching heat, but now, with the dark air, she felt like she’d been plunged into ice water or dropped in a snowdrift in the middle of a Faerghus winter, echoing deep into her chest.</p>
<p><em>Faerghus winter.</em> Ashe will never be able to see one again.</p>
<p>It’s that moment when she truly realizes it - she killed one of her students. He may not have been in the Deer, but Ashe was still her student. Kind, knightly Ashe who loved stories about knights and legends of old, who loved to cook foods from all over Fódlan, who tended to the plants in the greenhouse like they were his own children.</p>
<p>And Byleth killed him.</p>
<p>The thought makes her dizzy, her stomach doing somersaults, and she gags. She’s taken hundreds of lives before, but this was the first time it was personal, someone she <em>knew</em>.</p>
<p>With some effort, she pushes herself up, clumsily reaching for the glass of water next to her bed, and drains the cup. It’s the fifth glass she’s had in the past hour and a half, but her stomach still turns. Her hands are freezing. Maybe she needs food. The last thing she ate was a dry apple and overcooked steak before they entered Aliell, and that was just before midday. Byleth should probably head to get dinner.</p>
<p>As she swung her legs over the edge of the bed, though, her stomach rolled again, and she gagged, feeling like she was going to vomit. Byleth swallows, and whatever she swallows burns.</p>
<p>Okay, never mind. Food would not help her stomach.</p>
<p>Groaning, Byleth lays down on the bed again, throwing one arm over her eyes before the other goes onto her stomach, and any energy she had left leaves her.</p>
<p>It’s cold. It’s really fucking cold. She shivers, and tries to pull at least one blanket over her, but she can barely move her arms. There’s a bone-chilling ache in her bones, making her shiver, and there was a headache forming in the back of her head.</p>
<p><em>Maybe resting will help,</em> Byleth decides, and it doesn’t take her long to slip into comforting, warm darkness.</p><hr/>
<p>Something cold was holding her hand when she woke up.</p>
<p>Byleth’s vision was dark spots dancing in front of them. Her mouth felt like someone had shoved a wad of cotton-balls into it, and there was a slight ringing in her ears.</p>
<p>“Byleth?”</p>
<p>Someone was speaking - speaking to her, she realized after a moment. Peeling open her eyes with a tremendous amount of effort, and even more to not just slip into darkness again.</p>
<p>It was bright. It was damnably bright, like the sun was shining directly into her eyes. Byleth winced, turning her head away from the sun-</p>
<p>-right into a pair of sharp, forest green eyes.</p>
<p>“Rest well, Byleth?”</p>
<p>She groans.</p>
<p>“Wha... wha’ ‘re you doin’ here?” She asks, because - well, it’s not the first time she’s seen his ghost - he's been a constant since she first crossed the Throat and met up with her father after she left Almyra, always in the corner of her eye, making quips and jabs and observations about everything from battle to the fish she wanted to catch to bets on which bartender or waitress Renaldo was going to sleep with - but... it’s been a while. Not since the Sealed Forest, just glimpses and the feeling that she was being watched. A part of Byleth thought that he left with Sothis.</p>
<p>It was odd, not having a voice in her head.</p>
<p>A tilt of the head from the shimmering figure... sitting on a bed next to her. Byleth frowned.</p>
<p>“When did my... my room get ano... another bed?”</p>
<p>“It’s the infirmary, Byleth,” a familiar voice says. She can’t place who it belongs to - her ghost, to Khalid, or... or... Claude? Everything is fuzzy, and it's hard to tell.</p>
<p>“Why...?”</p>
<p>“You’re sick.”</p>
<p>“I feel...” she trailed off. She... she couldn’t tell how she felt. Her body ached, and she was freezing. “‘M cold. ‘M really cold.”</p>
<p>“Are you cold? Or is it your hands that are cold, Byleth?” Khalid says. Green eyes pierce through her. “They are stained with blood, after all. So much blood, Ashen Demon. First mine, and then Jeralt’s, and now your former students.” A contemplative hum while Byleth’s heart twists. “Oh, what was his name... Ashe? Adoptive son to the murdered lord, the lord that you were sent to kill.”</p>
<p>There’s a grin on his face, but it’s crooked, too malicious, and a far cry from the sunny grin it used to be. There’s blood on his lips, ruby red like Edelgard’s cape, like Monica’s hair, like Jeralt and Ashe’s blood. It’s the grin of a predator, a schemer, and cutting through her. It’s wrong on his face, too vindictive.</p>
<p>“Stop lookin’ at me li’ that,” she slurs, head lolling to the side to stop from looking at him. A short, sharp laugh, and he fades into her view on the other side of the bed. The light from the window both blinds her and makes Khalid shimmer in the golden rays.</p>
<p>“What? I’m just stating facts, <em>Ashen Demon,</em>” Khalid says. “How many lives have you taken, now? How many lives had you taken before we met?” His voice drops, then, dripping with venom, eyes narrowing at her. “All that, and you still couldn’t kill Maalik. Still couldn’t suss out Solon and Edelgard and Kronya before they did their damage. Some mercenary you are.”</p>
<p>“Shut up,” Byleth hissed. “Jus... just shut up...” It feels like someone is driving a knife through her chest, slowly, painfully, her lungs aching with each breath and she’s freezing, shivering. She wants the warmth she felt that night, the one she gets when she uses her Crest, that wraps around her and fills her chest with something other than an unbeating heart and icy chill. She wants the warmth of Claude, of his puffy jacket and the rare smiles that seem to be reserved for her and the trust in which he says my friend.</p>
<p>But her body is arctic like a Faerghus winter, settling deep into her bones and leaving her rooted, frozen to the ground, unable to look away from Khalid. He’s bleeding, red all over his chest, dripping to the floor and she can’t look away. Byleth is helpless, exposed, vulnerable, and she suddenly understands why Claude doesn’t trust easily, why he compares trust to vulnerability and why he hates being vulnerable.</p>
<p>“Sto... stop looking at me li... like that,” Byleth pleads quietly. “Stop looking... stop looking at me... like that, Khalid. I... I tried, Goddess, I tried-“ Her voice cracks, and her stomach turns. She hasn’t felt this way since Jeralt’s death.</p>
<p>It seems so long ago. To everyone else, it was.</p>
<p>“Because you abandoned them, Byleth,” Khalid reminds her, voice <em>grating</em> and <em>gloating</em> and <em>wrong</em>. “You say you’re loyal to the end, but you’re just a liar. You couldn’t save me, you couldn’t save that student of yours, you couldn’t save your own <em>damn father!”</em> She winces, whimpering, and she knows, <em>she knows.</em> “Then you lost Sothis because of your own recklessness, going after Kronya, then abandoned your precious fawns to fight in a war by themselves.”</p>
<p>“Shut up,” she pleads again, to no avail. She tries to cover her ears with her hands, but her body is so heavy.</p>
<p>“You abandoned Lorenz, who was beginning to respect you and see you as an equal. You abandoned Lysthiea, who shared her sweets and fears with, who you carried to her room when she fell asleep in the library. You abandoned Leonie, right after her mentor died, and you were her only connection to him-“</p>
<p>“Shut up-“</p>
<p>“You abandoned Marianne, who was starting to see the world in a different light. You abandoned Hilda, who you were helping to get over her fear of failure. You abandoned Ignatz, who you gave confidence too and never judged him for being an artist rather than a knight. You abandoned Raphael, who you helped send gifts to his sister and sparred with him-“</p>
<p>“Shut up, Khalid, <em>please-”</em></p>
<p>“You abandoned Claude, who was beginning to trust you and think of you as a friend, who had your back!” Khalid was yelling, now, furious. His eyes a dead toxic green and teary and cutting a hole into her chest, and they were scared. Scared of dying, and she couldn’t keep that light from them. Byleth felt like a failure. “You are! All of them had your back, Byleth, just like I did. They supported you and cared for you, treated you like a friend, just as I did. And you left them, just like you did to me!”</p>
<p>“I’m sorry, Khalid, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to... to let you die, I’m sorry.” There was something wet on Byleth’s cheeks now- was she crying? She couldn’t tell. Her body was numb, and at some point, she had squeezed her eyes close to keep from seeing the blood, but she was still hearing them, and her hands were cold and wet and <em>was she dying?-</em></p>
<p>There’s something resting on her head, then, and she can’t help but flinch, startled by the touch. Everything is too loud and too quiet, swimming underwater while the sounds of war beat down on her from above.</p>
<p>A sweet smell drifts to her, like honey and pine, like too many lost memories to count, and she opens her eyes to try and find the source of it because it smells war. She barely catches sight of green eyes - this time calm, bright, worried - before the smell is overwhelming and she falls back into cold darkness. But just before that, she wonders if she feels something warm gently wrapping around her hand.</p><hr/>
<p>
  <span>Claude sighs, shakily capping the vial in his hands once he’s sure Byleth was asleep, breathing much more even and slower than it had been just a few minutes ago, shaky and near-hyperventilating. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There are still tear tracks on her face, and Claude leans forward. With the gentlest touch he can muster up, he flicks them off, his gut still not quite sitting right, like a stone had been dropped into it. </span>
  <span>It was a well-known fact that Byleth rarely ever showed any emotion. And, while she had gotten better at it over her year at the academy, there was one emotion which anyone had only seen once - sadness. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The first time was because of Jeralt’s death. This time, though, Claude couldn’t understand <em>why</em>. What had caused Byleth Eisner, the famous, stone-cold Ashen Demon, to cry? It had to have been more than a simple nightmare.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>That was what Claude first expected, waiting for her to wake up from her sudden fever when she started talking. He thought she was awake, but she was barely responding to him, saying things that didn’t make sense, and didn’t seem to see him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Rather, it seemed like she was staring at something else, something Claude couldn’t see, her gaze unfocused and yet sharp as a dagger’s point. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He had seen that look a few times, back in the Academy, like she was staring at something that wasn’t there the way a cat stares at a wall. Unblinking, unmoving. Claude had wondered why, then, at the Sealed Forest, she had told him about the Goddess living in her head. It would explain her zoning out like that, and she hadn’t done it about - in her time - five months, five years for Claude, from the Sealed Forest until then, sick and in the infirmary bed, seeing and talking to someone he couldn’t see.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And then there was the manner of his name. His real name, the one Byleth had pleaded - </span>
  <em>
    <span>pleaded </span>
  </em>
  <span>- to shut up. Claude was lucky none of the Deer were in the room to see him startle and break a glass of water from surprise at the use of his name, something he hadn’t been called in eight years, and he had panicked, thinking she somehow knew, that someone was onto him, that he wasn’t who he said he was.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She did know, actually. He had known since practically the beginning of the year that Byleth was his Byleth, the childhood friend he had almost died to protect. She didn’t know his name, though, at the same time, because puberty had been kind to him and he went under a different name now and he held his secrets and past close to his chest and her memories were all hazy. For a while, Claude wondered if she had even remembered him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Byleth did, but not in the way he expected. Based on the words she spoke, she was making it sound like he had </span>
  <em>
    <span>died</span>
  </em>
  <span>, when he hadn’t. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Claude shuddered as his mind flashed back to that night. How close he’d been to death, and how, while he was lucky, Karim was not. She must’ve gotten them confused somehow. And now she was having nightmares - dare he say hallucinations - about him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He gulped, a bad taste forming his mouth.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But there would be time to unpack that later. Right now, Claude had secrets to keep, dreams to achieve, and a sick Byleth to take care of. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>So Claude rose from his chair, intent on finding Manuela.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I'M SO SORRY ASHE</p>
<p> </p>
<p>  <a href="https://ccwritesstuff.tumblr.com/">I Have a Tumblr!</a></p></blockquote></div></div>
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